The French language was constructed by way of discussions across heterogeneous productions (remarks, libels, grammars, methods, treatises, translation, etc.) which were conducted throughout widely scattered sites (salons, academies, clientel networks). Consensus was arrived at because the political conjuncture created a space conductive to the deployment of a sort of collective locutor. At the end of the 17th century, the Dictionnaire de l&#8217;Acad&#233;mie (1694) became a linguistic tool which broughgt the enterprise to a close.